Modern vehicles such as large trucks, include many fluid circuits that require removal of large amounts of heat during operation of the vehicle to achieve peak performance, long life and prevent breakdown of the vehicle. It is not uncommon in such vehicles to have a water-based cooling unit for cooling of the vehicle engine, one or more oil coolers for hydraulic circuits of the vehicle, an engine charge air cooling circuit, and one or more refrigeration units for providing air conditioning of the driver compartment and perhaps refrigeration of a cargo compartment of the vehicle.
As vehicles have become more powerful, and equipped with more systems requiring cooling, the volume of air flow necessary to provide cooling for these fluids has increased dramatically. Large fans are required to provide the necessary volume of air. As the size of the fans has grown, the demands on the structure of the cooling system for supporting the fan have grown as well.
At the same time as the size of the cooling loads and fans have been increasing dramatically, customers and government regulators are demanding improved efficiency and fuel utilization in vehicles. In order to meet these demands, it is highly desirable to make a cooling system as compact as possible, while maintaining overall ruggedness for environmental and servicing cost reasons, and to minimize both the original and life cycle cost of ownership.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved cooling system. Other objects of the invention include:                (1) providing an improved cooling system for use in vehicles;        (2) to provide a system which is compact in size, and of minimal weight;        (3) to provide a system having great flexibility to be tailored to the needs of a particular application; and        (4) a system of rugged straightforward construction.        